Lot Essay
Related Literature:
J.I.H. Baur, An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn, New York, 1940, p. 22
P. Hills, Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1972, p. 26
The catalogue for Johnson's 1907 estate sale at American Art Galleries describes the painting as:
"Five young children are enjoying the delights of a hay barn.
Three girls, half buried in the soft hay, are watching the
antics of two boys who climb upon a crossbeam above the mow. The sunlight, falling through the broad open barn door, strongly
illuminates the figures and the large beam, and throws a mysterious shadow over the interior"
This painting is one of the most ambitious works in a series that Johnson painted in an old barn, directly behind the farm house that his sister (Harriet May nee Johnson) rented with her family in Kennebunkport, Maine in the summers of the late 1870s. The barn, and the sizable group of May children, provided the artist the subjects for a fine group of well-known oils. Other related paintings are in the collections of The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; The Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, California; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.
John I.H. Baur summarized the excellence of this group of paintings in his 1940 catalogue for the Brooklyn Museum exhibition: "Perhaps the best approach to the culmination of his work in genre is a group of intimate little pictures done at various intervals from about 1873 to 1879 in Kennebunkport, Maine...The series..shows still the characteristic use of warm transparent browns in the background, but in the figures Johnson has achieved a solidity of form and subdued richness of color that is quite new." (Baur, p. 22)
This painting will be included in Patricia Hills' forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Eastman Johnson's works. A letter from Dr. Hills, discussing the painting, will accompany the lot.
J.I.H. Baur, An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn, New York, 1940, p. 22
P. Hills, Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1972, p. 26
The catalogue for Johnson's 1907 estate sale at American Art Galleries describes the painting as:
"Five young children are enjoying the delights of a hay barn.
Three girls, half buried in the soft hay, are watching the
antics of two boys who climb upon a crossbeam above the mow. The sunlight, falling through the broad open barn door, strongly
illuminates the figures and the large beam, and throws a mysterious shadow over the interior"
This painting is one of the most ambitious works in a series that Johnson painted in an old barn, directly behind the farm house that his sister (Harriet May nee Johnson) rented with her family in Kennebunkport, Maine in the summers of the late 1870s. The barn, and the sizable group of May children, provided the artist the subjects for a fine group of well-known oils. Other related paintings are in the collections of The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; The Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, California; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.
John I.H. Baur summarized the excellence of this group of paintings in his 1940 catalogue for the Brooklyn Museum exhibition: "Perhaps the best approach to the culmination of his work in genre is a group of intimate little pictures done at various intervals from about 1873 to 1879 in Kennebunkport, Maine...The series..shows still the characteristic use of warm transparent browns in the background, but in the figures Johnson has achieved a solidity of form and subdued richness of color that is quite new." (Baur, p. 22)
This painting will be included in Patricia Hills' forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Eastman Johnson's works. A letter from Dr. Hills, discussing the painting, will accompany the lot.